Teacher recruitment and retention has been high-profile in the media recently. It is clear that school leaders are concerned about how we can keep those already in the profession engaged and committed to their careers – and where the next generation of teachers will come from.
In secondary, it is incredibly hard to recruit into shortage subjects such as physics, chemistry, maths and foreign languages. It is also proving very challenging to retain teachers and I have noticed a difference in the past five years regarding the number of teachers leaving the profession. I don’t have decades of experience to compare this current situation to, however I can certainly see the impact of huge educational reform, increased rigour and higher levels of accountability on the teaching profession.
I follow the mantra that you live and die by your appointments and I firmly believe that recruiting the right people with the right attitudes is a fundamental part of becoming a high-performing school. Consequently I have always treated recruitment very seriously and since becoming a head I have ensured I take a leading role in the appointment of staff.
However, it is incredibly frustrating when you invest a significant amount of time, effort and money into a recruitment process only to find there is a very weak or limited field of applicants. Are teachers now less prepared to move schools? Has there been so much reform to our systems in education that people are happier sticking with what they know rather than moving into the unknown?
Other heads I talk to have experienced similar frustrations in recent years and it is not uncommon for secondary schools to receive no applications worthy of interview for vacancies in shortage subjects. With the prospect of the compulsory EBacc on the horizon I have significant concerns about where all these additional teachers are going to appear from.
A side effect of this teacher shortage has been the way schools deal with teachers whose performance is a concern. In the past, if a teacher is not meeting the Teachers’ Standards then school leaders would commonly instigate a support package that might lead to a capability process if the teacher was unable to make the necessary improvements.
Clearly some schools apply these policies in a very robust manner and I know of certain schools that take an incredibly hard line with teachers who are not performing at an acceptable level. Other schools might take a more developmental approach to supporting individuals to improve and while not accepting poor performance at any level, adopt a strategy that has a genuine desire to support the person.
However, with the paucity of science and maths teachers, have schools had to reconsider their approach to staff who require support or who are heading towards capability? Someone described this as a “love the one you’re with” approach, where many schools are not in a position to create high turnovers in shortage subjects and therefore it is much more sensible to work with an individual in a supportive way, even if it bends the capability policy somewhat.
What this has all led to is a significant amount of disparity between teachers in secondary education, depending on the subject you teach. Schools now commonly pay shortage subject teachers recruitment and retention allowances to incentivise an employment offer. This has been a recruitment strategy for some time for attracting graduates too.
But where does this stop? Are we more likely to enter a capability process with an underperforming teacher of a subject that is easier to recruit to, such as PE, compared to a shortage area such as maths? Are we more likely to take a supportive and developmental approach to the teacher of maths because we are concerned about the quality of what else there is out there if we needed to recruit?
There are some serious ethical questions here that school leaders need to consider and, while it might be naïve to think that we could achieve true equity across our staffing and employment structures, the teacher shortage is unquestionably creating some issues that need significant reflection.
- SecEd’s headteacher diarist is in his second year of headship at a comprehensive school in the Midlands.